It was a few weeks back that I took
a Friday and Monday off for a long weekend of sailboat racing. An old friend and very talented skipper from
my previous life had invited me to Newport, RI to join his team for the annual
New York Yacht Club Regatta. This year
was the 169th event dating the club back to 1844. Busy year was 1844! Friday morning my body clock woke me to my
normal early hour. While the rest of the
crew dozed in, the skipper, his wife, another early bird and I slipped out for
a hot breakfast and to fulfill a short list of last minute chores before our
day of play. On that list was to collect
a #5 flag (a triangular pendent with the top half black and the bottom half
white) from the local chandlery at opening, as prearranged the evening
before. In boat races competitors are
split into divisions based on handicap ratings, each division is identified by
a number shown with a flag that helps you know who your racing, when your start
is, who gives rights etc., while out on the water. The keeper of the chandlery was an animated
old salt. He seemed to know everything
about boating, had traveled the world with the Coast Guard and was generally entertaining. I, being only the tag along on this morning
shopping trip, was at liberty to take photos and chat away. One of my shots was a string of colorful flags
hanging from the ceiling as a bit of nautical decoration. The typical flags you see hung all in a line
flapping form boats and waterside restaurants.
These flags at one point were more than decoration, with each meaning a
different letter much like our number flag.
Before radios and cell phones these flags would be used in line to
create messages between boats and were a vital means of communication. As I set myself for this shot he quickly
broke in with a story.

“You know,
our store here is one of many,” says he.
“Every year we gather together and visit trade and boat shows for
advertising here in the New England states.
A couple years back I was headed into the lobby of a giant convention
center where our display took up two floors.
From the top floor we had all those flags hanging down to spruce up or
spot. I was walking in with Rose the
owners wife, an 80 year old lady who had circled the globe on sailboats, when
she looked up, stopped short and grabbed my arm.” “Take those down” she says. “I kind ‘a paused and was a little
confused. I asked why? Everything looks great!” She slowly turned her head looked him I the
eye and in an even tone said, “do you know what they say?...Take them down,
now.”

Photo by: Garth Woodruff

Newport, RI

Sailors have played these games
with flags for years. The Naval Academy
graduations have yearly events where the young graduates helping decorate some
party tent would eventually be ousted by a wiser higher rank before the evening
was out. All conspiring parties involved,
plastered with naughty grins, knowing that 90% of the crowed had no idea the
vulgarity that was the back drop to all their happy photos. Funny stories yes, but more so it’s these old
school life lessons that often interest me.
These ancient trades and skills that have little application for the
majority in the modern age yet still have meaning and use to some.

The gardens this time of year are
exactly the same. 90% of modern society
would walk onto our farm and see plants.
They couldn’t decipher between a weed and tomato never mind between a
‘Big Boy’ and a ‘Roma’. Without a label
on the bag many of today’s shoppers don’t know what they are buying. And, even if they did, how it would be farmed
might still be a mystery. Yet we have dozens of selections all lacing our
fields and all with their unique problems.
It’s been wet and with wet comes bugs and disease. Our students are hard at it. When they walk up to a row they are looking
past the basic and tapping into old school skills. Like Rose, these young farmers are looking
over a mosaic of color, reading the plants as they flash up communication to
their care givers. More than water and
fertilizer, but disease and pest. And of
the hundreds of considerations, what diseases and pests? Our plants in an attempt to communicate to us
flash up flags like mariners of old hailing for help. It’s not technology that reads these signs, its
human faces and hands. At our farm it’s
young faces and hands that are being taught the tricks of the old farmer. These are the youth that now carry, seemingly
silly, dying knowledge that is also the responsibility for feed the world.